The Great Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley (review)

92CIVIL WAR HISTORY economies. Yet the plantation economy, a mode of production distinct from feudal and capitalistic society and characterized by paternalistic culture and social organization, did not survive unchanged. Chattel slavery as a system of labor control gave way to the labor contract and sharecropping. Paternalism and the force and violence that sustained it continued, but in modified and weakened form. And ultimately it was not paternalistic repression that kept blacks in the thrall of poverty, Mandle concludes, but rather the exclusion of blacks from alternative employment outside the plantation economy in other parts of the country. Things changed and the plantation economy broke down only when blacks got the chance to migrate North during World War I and World War II. Mandle presents his work as a contribution to Marxist social science, and although this theoretical concern gives the book a flatulent quality, non-Marxist scholars will find the author's discussion of the plantation economy as a mode of production informative and useful. Moreover Mandle's central argument for continuity in the survival of the planter class forms an important contribution to the present debate about the nature of the postwar southern political economy. Oubre's book in contrast, preoccupied as it is with discrete facts, is less intellectually satisfying because it is totally devoid not only ofanything resemblingan original interpretation or insight, but of any ideas at all. One honestly wonders on what grounds the Louisiana State University Press based its decision to publish the manuscript. It has been published, however, and the best that can be said for it is that it presents some evidence about black land holding rather in the nature of a primary source. Herman BeIz University of Maryland, College Park The Great Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley. By Robert F. Horowitz. (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1979. Pp. xii, 226. $15.00.) This thinvolume is the first modern biography ofJames M. Ashley. It has long been needed because of his importance in Ohio and national politics during the fifteenyears followingthe introduction ofthe KansasNebraska bill. Considering his close relationship with Chase, Sumner and a score of other leaders, it is unfortunate that his papers burned during his lifetime. Nevertheless, Professor Horowitz located a surprising number of Ashley items in other collections and utilized a wide variety of manuscript, documentary and newspaper sources in writing this book. The Ashleys were an old Tidewater Virginia family. John C. Ashley removed to Southern Ohio and involved his family in the religious enthusiasm of the Jacksonian era. Young James absorbed the evangelical zeal for reform and broke with his father and the family heritage as he came to detest slavery. Although politically inclined (he BOOK REVIEWS93 observed Harrison's inaugural when only sixteen), he was not a participant in the Free Soil crusade. The anti-Nebraska agitation, however, stimulated him to assume a leadership role in the emerging Republican party. In the next six years he publically supported black suffrage, won election to Congress and served as an indefatigable political advisor to Chase. That the new Congressman was immediately accepted by the radicals was evident from Charles Sumner's praise. As expected, Ashley's maiden speech blasted Southern society and called for immediate emancipation. Once the fighting began he demanded a vigorous war policy. He had a significant role in the termination of slavery in the Federal District and the passage of the Second Confiscation Act. Such was not the case as regards the bill prohibiting slavery in the territories. Nor was he active on the House floor in support of key party measures, notably the Pacific Railroad Act, the Homestead Bill and the National Banking Act, a facet of his career which Horowitz does not adequately probe. Threatened by the Democratic upsurge in Ohio in 1862, his reelection was facilitated by a split among the conservatives. Ashley had spoken of the need for a Federal antislavery amendment as early as 1856; the high point of his career occurred when he guided the Thirteenth Amendment through the House. The author correcdy assigns him more credit for his leadership on this important occasion than is often given. The Ohioan first delineated areconstruction programinJanuary 1861...